1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the identification of the source of documents through the incorporation of a unique identifying code barely visible to the unaided human eye on documents by software which creates or reproduces the document. Such software includes the software program which creates the document as well as software in a printer, facsimile machine or digital copier used to print the document. The invention relates to systems and methods for providing such protection as well as the documents produced thereby.
2. Background Information
Software piracy is one of the biggest problems facing the software industry. It is estimated that only about 40% (by value) of the software in the United States is legal. That is only about 40% of the software has been purchased. The remainder is copied from legal software. As low as this may sound, it is a higher percentage of any other country. In Britain the estimate is that only about 20% of the software is legal. The Far East and Russia are known as one diskette countries, meaning that almost no legal software exists. According to a recent estimate, the cost to the software industry of piracy is $10-12 Billion a year.
Present techniques for protecting software are principally directed toward making it more difficult to copy the software. However, there is considerable consumer resistance to this approach, and computer hackers take great pride in meeting the challenge of defeating the lock. Other approaches such as placing a "time bomb" in the program which is activated if a license fee is not timely paid are also not received favorably by purchasers and can lead to possible liability for destroying a user's data.
The software industry has recently tried to stem the tide of piracy through legal remedies. However, this is a costly and time-consuming approach, which generally requires access to the host computer, and could backfire if suspicions turn out to be unfounded. Generally, legal redress is only suitable for large scale piracy. There is also high interest in restricting or at least detecting unauthorized use of printers, copiers and facsimile machines.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved technique for protecting software from piracy.
There is a need for such a technique which does not require access to the host computer on which the software is run.
There is also a need for such a technique which is sufficiently secure that attempts to defeat it are discouraged.
There is an additional need for such a technique which allows identification of unauthorized software copies without noticeably affecting the performance of the software or even the ability to copy it, again, so that the incentive to by-pass the technique is minimized.
There is also a need for a technique for unobtrusively detecting unauthorized use of printers, copiers and facsimile machines.